


So Darkness I Became

by banbanabas



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ancestors, Post-Scratch, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 05:18:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4466852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/banbanabas/pseuds/banbanabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The more he tries to save them, the more damage he does to himself.  Executor Darkleer-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Darkness I Became

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacepirate369](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacepirate369/gifts).



> written for the prompt: "Really any fic from Darkleer's perspective would be great. Could be before or after his exile, or both. Thanks!" i hope you enjoy. slight alterations made to canon.

_“The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out,_

_“You left me in the dark.”_

///

The moons sit low on the horizon, casting light that shines through Horuss’s respiteblock window and pools on the linoleum floor. At the work table in the far corner, Horuss hovers over a pile of broken plastic and metal: his unfortunate alarm clock. He sighs and tosses the shattered, unsalvageable bits into the wastebin. He can’t quite remember how many clocks he has broken. At some point, he will have to build one completely of metal that will withstand his STRONG hand-swatting in the early evening hours. Until he gets those parts, though, he must spend hours of his time refitting the flimsy variety.

 The quiet clip-clopping of his lusus’s hooves breaks him from his concentration. Aurthor peeks his head through the doorway and motions for Horuss to follow. “What is it, Aurthor?” he asks. The centaur-like beast shrugs and knocks softly against the door. “A visitor? At this hour?” Aurthor nods.

 Horuss hurries downstairs and to the foyer where he peeks through the small, mounted visitor-viewing lens in the door. On the stoop stands a thin-framed girl with asymmetric horns, hands on hips and lips pursed. Confused, Horuss steps back and scans the room for his bow. He can probably count the number of people who have come to his door on one hand, not to mention the number that arrived at this ungodly hour (which is zero). With his bow and quiver shrugged over his shoulder, Horuss unlocks the door and swings it open just enough to be considered polite. “Hello. Can I help you with something?” he inquires.

 The girl stiffens as soon as she sees him in the doorway. “Hi. Yes, actually. I hate to ask this of you, but I seem to have dropped something on your roof from one of the upper staircases.” She drops her gaze to the floor and bares her teeth in a self-deprecating grimace. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but would you mind if I went to fetch it?”

 Horuss raises his eyebrows. “Oh. I can bring it to you, if you wait here,” he says, but the girl immediately gasps and steps forward, arms outstretched and waving dismissively.

 “No, no, let me get it, please! I don’t want to inconvenience you,” she says quickly. Horuss sees a glint of panic in her eyes. He squints at her skeptically.

 “What is it?”

 “What is what?”

 “The thing you dropped on my roof.”

 A blush forms on her cheeks as she sputters, “Nothing important! It’s just heavy, and I don’t want to impose—”

 “I am certain I will be able to lift it. I will be back shortly—”

 “ _No_!” she shouts, leaping forward. She jams her shoe in the doorway before Horuss can slam it shut, and Horuss’s hands jump instinctively to his bow. His visitor squeezes her head into the crack between the door and the wall, pressing lightly on the door with both hands. “Wait, please! Just let me get it myself!”

 “I think you should go,” he says in a clipped tone. Her face falls.

 “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have...,” she mutters. “I...”

 “What did you drop on my roof?” he demands. She stares at him pleadingly. Horuss flares his nostrils and growls. Finally, the girl sighs and leans her head against the door.

 “I was disposing of a body,” she says cleanly. Horuss tightens his grip on the bow. “I didn’t kill anyone! The drones got someone on the beach. I was trying to get rid of it. It’s been sitting on the beach since twilight.”

 Alarm bells ring in his mind, but looking at the smallish troll trapped in his doorway, he can’t seem to find a threat in her words. Anyone can be dangerous, he knows. But not everyone is manipulative enough to beg a stranger for a favor in order to attack. “Well,” he says. She swallows, eyes shut tightly. “In that case, I will bring it down to you.”

 Her mouth nearly drops open. “You’re...you’re going to get it yourself?”

 “I would rather not leave a corpse decomposing on my hive,” he says dryly. She stares in silent shock. “If you’ll let me close the door, I will be back momentarily.”

 “Ah. Sorry.” She scoots back outside. “I’ll be out here, then.” Horuss closes the door swiftly and, thinking of Aurthor, locks it. The conversation runs through his mind over and over. Did he really just concede to grab a dead body for a stranger? Shaking his head, he grabs some gloves from his cleaning material cabinet and makes his way to the roof.

 And there it is. In a crumpled heap near the cliff face he finds the body of a green-blooded troll, obviously dropped from the stairwell above. His visitor must have slipped and dropped the body on accident. Or killed this troll by pushing him over to fall to his death, a more morbid part of him thinks, but Horuss sincerely doubts that that girl would be strong enough to fight this greenblood to the death. Besides, the body is pocked with bulletholes, evidence of a drone attack. Deciding the girls’s story was true enough, Horuss grabs the ankles and shirt collar and lifts it from the floor with relative ease. He thanks the gods above for his STRENGTH as he carries it to the hatch leading back into his hive.

 Before descending, however, he pauses. The last thing he wants to do is carry a dripping corpse through his hive for a girl whose name he doesn’t even know. He shuffles to the side of the roof and calls down, “Are you still there?”

 “Yes! I’m right here,” she replies. She skips out from the awning and looks up at Horuss. He holds the body over the side, dangling it by an ankle with one hand. The girl’s eyebrows creep upward in surprise, and she raises her hands as if to catch the corpse herself. Horuss suppresses a snort.

 “You might want to move,” he shouts to her.

 “I don’t want it to smear on your walkway!” she replies, keeping her hands in position.

 “I don’t want to smear _you_ on my walkway. Please move.” Sighing, she backs up a few paces. Horuss lets go, and the body hits the pavement with a squelch. The girl doesn’t flinch when blood splatters on her skirt.

 “Thank you for your help!” she yells to him. Horuss waves, she waves back, and she moves forward to lift the body from the ground. Admittedly, he doesn’t believe she can pick it up, and he is genuinely surprised when she hooks the knees over her shoulders and begins to drag it down the walkway. On the other hand, he can clearly see the strain in her muscles. She won’t be moving very fast.

 Before she even leaves the front wall of his hive, he is behind her lifting the corpse by the wrists. “I can help you carry it,” he says. She nearly jumps out of her skin.

 “What? You don’t have to—”

 “I insist.”

 “...Okay.”

 They walk up several craggy staircases with the body in tow. Horuss learns her name is Aranea, she lives in the hive two over from his and a little higher on the cliff face, and she regularly combs the beach for drone cullings so she can feed her lusus. “She’s usually very agreeable as long as I feed her properly,” she comments with a disheartened laugh.

 When they reach the entrance to her hive, Aranea lowers the body’s legs and turns to Horuss. “Thank you for your help, but I’ve got it from here,” she says, smiling.

 “Are you sure? It is no inconvenience to me,” he says while lifting the body a little to make his point. Aranea shakes her head.

 “I do this all the time. I can carry it. I appreciate your help, though, don’t misunderstand,” she adds, motioning to the greenblood.

 Horuss nods. “I am glad to assist. If you need help with...lifting again, do let me know.”

 She grins, and unlike the strained expressions he saw back at his hive, this smile actually reaches her eyes. “Thank you. Take care, Horuss.”

 “Goodbye, Aranea.”

 She shuts the door as he walks away. Horuss returns to his hive and heads to the sanitaryblock to freshen up. Aurthor gives him a curious look but offers no reprimand.

 ///

 Over the ensuing weeks, Horuss spends far more time with Aranea than expected. Soon after she first contacted him about carrying drone cullings to her hive, they exchange trollhandles and find themselves at the other’s hive for little more than time spent with another troll. At least, that is what Horuss thinks. Once he gets to know Aranea better, he realizes how little contact he has with other trolls. He goes to market for necessary items, of course, but he has never spoken to anyone further than what social norms require.

 About Aranea, though. She talks too much; of this he is certain. She has a talent for speaking on and on about subjects Horuss loses track of, especially about the books in her extensive library. Horuss has no idea where she got all the books, nor how many of them she has read (more than he expects, probably), but no matter what the conversation is about, she will bring up something she read one day or last week or a few perigees ago. Some might find it annoying, but Horuss, perhaps due to his lack of peer interaction, finds it endearing.

 And she listens to him, too. She brings him informative tomes on archery whenever she gets her hands on them, acutely aware of how he spends most of his days. He jokingly asks her for books on metalworking and musclebeasts, too, but he fears she will unironically leave them on his doorstep any day now.

 Regardless of the shenanigans, he must admit it is nice to have someone who acknowledges him for more than just his blood color.

 ///

 “Flawless!” Aranea shouts triumphantly. Horuss smirks at the targets, each sporting an arrow in the bulls-eye. “Absolutely flawless! Ten out of ten! Bravo, bravo!”

 “Thank you for your praise,” Horuss says, “but I will have to shoot all three targets at once in the drafting exam. Not one at a time. I am far from flawless.”

 Aranea shushes him from her spot in the sand. “You’re barely five sweeps old and hit every bulls-eye. By the time you’re drafted, they’ll be promoting you to Head Archeradicator.”

 Horuss throws his head back and laughs. “Yes, of course. And you’ll be top Journalinguist on Alternia, reporting all my feats in battle, and we’ll both be so famous that our posters are plastered on city walls.”

 “Excellent!” Aranea cries, jumping up to pose. “Extra, extra! Horuss Zahhak has conquered another planet and taken all their riches for trollkind! What a marvelous victor he is!”

 They joke and joke, and finally, Horuss forgets all about his training because his stomach hurts from all the laughing.

///

 “Aranea?”

 She comes to his doorstep late one evening with tears in her eyes. He sits her in the respiteblock with tissues and warm cocoa. He would say he was surprised to see her cry, but honestly, he is more surprised by her silence. After nearly an hour of waiting, she finally speaks. She tells him about her lusus and what she eats, how she has to find enough bodies to keep her sated, and how sometimes, she craves the living.

 “I have to bring her live feed,” she whispers. “I have to use my...my...” She points to her forehead, then wipes her tears with the same hand. Horuss nods knowingly and pats her on the shoulder. “They don’t know what I’m doing, Horuss. They have no idea they’re about to die when I bring them there.”

 “You are only doing what you have to to survive,” he says.

 She shudders. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, Horuss.”

 “I know.” Horuss pulls her in close, and she cries into his shirt.

 He is so pale for her that it hurts.

 ///

 In the midst of daylight, Horuss awakes to glass shattering. He jumps in his sleep, poking his head out of the recuperacoon warily. His window is fine. The crash must have come from Aurthor downstairs. Before he can call down and check on his lusus, though, he hears the sounds of a commotion, angry whinnying, and shouting from voices he does not recognize.

 They are not alone in their hive.

 Horuss leaps from the ‘coon and quickly towels off the sopor, navigating his block as quietly as he can. More crashes ring in his ears. Horuss can feel the vibrations of Aurthor’s stomping even upstairs. He grabs his bow and quiver and creeps silently down the steps to the main foyer, fear pulsing in his veins.

 At the foot of the stairs, he hears a shrill, piercing noise that can only be metal hitting metal. A troll curses. Horuss draws an arrow taut, points it at the floor, and steps into the foyer toward the entrance to the nutritionblock. One of the large windows beside the front door is shattered. Across from it, three crossbow bolts jut from the wall. Horuss’s heart sinks. Whoever these intruders are, they are dangerous. And that means he will have to dispose of them quickly.

 He has never killed a troll. The only blood on his hands comes from helping Aranea feed her lusus. Though he sees drones cull delinquents on the beach almost daily, his own brushes with death are few and far between, mostly occuring as far back as the trials in the brooding caverns. He doesn’t know death—not as intimately as he is expected to. Disheartened, Horuss presses himself against the wall beside the nutritionblock’s entrance and struggles to keep still. He will have to be fast. No hesitating. The intruders’ voices have sustained rumbles and growls; they are adults, no question. They have weapons and intend to harm. And Aurthor is in there fighting while Horuss waits like a wiggler. After several long seconds, he takes a deep, shuddering breath. He lifts his bow, takes a firing stance in the entrance to the block, aims, and fires.

 His first arrow finds its mark in a heavily-clothed troll’s chest, who lumbers forward before collapsing to the floor. Two other trolls turn in surprise, one wielding a crossbow and the other a wickedly curved knife. Horuss nocks another arrow as the crossbow swings toward him. He lunges to the side; a bolt flies past his thigh and embeds in the wall behind him. Horuss releases his own arrow, and it hits home. The troll claws at his now-pierced throat, finally falling to the floor as well.

 Aurthor slams the last troll in the head with a cooking apparatus, and he crumbles, too. The room goes silent and still. Horuss can hear the ocean. Aren’t the waves too far up for this? He feels Aurthor’s hands on his shoulders, on his face, then pulling him in for a hug. He hugs his lusus back, though he can barely feel it. His eyes stay at rapt attention on the dead trolls sprawled across the floor.

 Their blood will probably stain the linoleum if he doesn’t clean up, he thinks. Aurthor steps back and looks at him concernedly. Perhaps he said that out loud. What a curious thing to say when there are dead bodies and blood and regret flooding his senses.

He walks past Aurthor and examines the troll shot through the throat. Every inch of skin below his face is wrapped tightly in dirty cloth. Sun-runners, he guesses. He remembers hearing about them in the markets: diurnal thieves that break in during the daylight hours while most other trolls sleep. They rob, they kill, and they escape before anyone has the sense to call for help. Horuss suppresses a shudder. He can only be glad that he woke up when he did. Besides, now he has more feed for Aranea’s lusus—

  _Aranea._  

“Aranea!” He jumps from his squat and sprints up the stairs, Aurthor whinnying in confusion behind him. He curses himself for not thinking of her before as he squints up at her hive, blocking the painfully strong sunlight with his hands. He can’t see her hive well enough to see if they’ve broken in. Fearing the worst, he turns on his grubtop to check Trollian. Aranea is idle, as he would expect at such an early hour.

 “Aranea! Sun-runners just broke into my hive.

“Are you all right?

“Please answer so I know if you are safe.

“Aranea?

“Aranea?”

 She doesn’t answer. He gives her three minutes, sitting restlessly in front of the monitor, but then stands in a rage. She could be in danger right now. They could be in her hive while she sleeps, hovering over her ‘coon with a crossbow aimed at her bloodpusher. He has to act.

 Horuss raids his drawers for long-sleeved clothes. Wearing long pants, a turtleneck, socks, and a pair of welding gloves, he scrambles down the stairs to grab his bow and quiver. Aurthor leans in from the nutritionblock and shrieks at the sight. He gallops forward and grabs Horuss by the shoulders, shaking him furiously. “I have to go, Aurthor! They might be at Aranea’s!” he cries. He ties a long-sleeved shirt around his face as he speaks, hands fumbling with the knot. Aurthor snorts at him. “I can’t wait. They could be in there right now! She has Spidermom, I know, but if they get to Aranea before she can flee to the basement, she’ll be fighting them alone!”

 Aurthor’s eyes fill with pain. He gestures to the door, at himself. “No, you can’t,” Horuss interjects. “There is no way to cover you quickly, and I am not going to let you burn.” They stare at one another, Horuss willing his lusus to let him go and Aurthor willing his charge to be safe. Finally, Aurthor sighs and pulls the young troll in for another hug. Horuss pats his lusus on the back. “I will be safe. Thank you, Dad.”

 He waits until Aurthor moves out of the door’s width to depart. The sun’s rays bathe him relentlessly, stealing his vision and his breath, but he presses on regardless. Up he treks, walking the path he knows so well even with nearly-closed eyes. And then, below and above, the earth shakes.

 He lunges for the cliff face to keep himself on the stairwell. Rubble rolls over the ledges above, tumbling over and out of his vision. But those were not rocks.

 They were chunks of hive wall.

 Panicked, Horuss shuffles up the cliff face, but all too soon, he hears voices moving downward somewhere to his left. He presses against the rocks again and waits for them to pass, but as they near him, he hears:

 “Massive spider bitch. Damn lusus ruined the raid.”

 “Hive killed it, though. And we got a body to sell, so I’m not complainin’.”

 “Whatever.”

 A group of trolls rappel down the steeper walls that the stairwells don’t reach. They notice neither him nor the rage boiling through his blood. Spidermom was dead, and Aranea...

  _A body to sell_.

 He moves to nock an arrow, but the unyielding rays of light blind him before he can aim. He covers his eyes with one hand, holds the arrow and bow with the other, and gauges his chances. They move surprisingly fast. Horuss scans them each for signs of Aranea, and finally, he sees. One troll, ridiculously massive, holds his rappelling rope in one hand and a burlap sack thrown over his shoulder in the other. Something moves within. He knows, he knows, he knows.

 But they are so far up. If he kills him, Aranea will be dashed to pieces when she lands on the crags below. He will have to wait until they hit the beach.

 Yet, even if she is safe from the fall, he can’t aim in daylight. The glare will only worsen on the sand. If he misses and shoots Aranea on accident...

 He doesn’t know what to do. The group passes obliviously, and Horuss gives chase down the stairwells, but he has no ideas, no plan, no way of escaping once he gets Aranea back. His feet carry him to the beach. He squats behind a rocky outcropping several yards from where the rappellers will land. There are five. Three have crossbows. All wear goggles—they can see more than he can.

 An eternity passes before they reach the sand. They lift their burlap sacks and jog across the beach, and all the while, Horuss holds an arrow taut on the bowstring. But there is no way he can win. He can’t save Aranea alone against five fully-facultied, armed adult trolls. If he attacks, he will die.

 He pulls back again anyway. He can’t give up on her now! One shot, that’s all he needs. He can kill the troll carrying Aranea. Maybe they’ll be unprepared to defend themselves, so he’ll grab Aranea and run. Yes, that’s how he will do it.

 He steps into the sun again, the steely taste of death on his tongue, but he still cannot aim. No, he has to take this shot. Just one! Just...

 He opens his eyes, but suddenly, horribly, the world turns red with fire, and pain shoots through his eyes. Horuss collapses in the sand, bow and arrow forgotten as he writhes in agony. Angry tears leak past his fingers.

 It is twilight before he can bear to make his way home, and by then, the sun-runners are long gone.

///

 He builds an apparatus that gives him sight again. He stumbles around the house until the parts arrive, and he can’t assemble it without Aurthor’s help, but he makes it work. It is clunky, large, and must be worn as a helmet, but the lenses work around his permanently scarred corneas. It is enough.

 Aurthor forgives him.

 Horuss’s nightmares seethe with bright lights and burlap sacks. He does not forgive himself.

///

 Once he outgrows schoolfeeding, he throws out all the books in his block, save for one.

 It is a satire. He was never much for reading, but Aranea, of course, told him it would “broaden his horizons.” Usually she loaned him books about his interests, but this was her favorite book, she said, because it made her think. Horuss’s multiple attempts to read it yielded little interest back then. He hated reading, hated it to his core, and even for her, he could not finish it.

 Now, he finds himself glued to its pages. He sees her in every word, recognizes phrases she once spoke in one conversation or another. She quoted this book quite often. He should have guessed.

 When he finally reaches the end, his fingers freeze on the edge of the last page. He felt her, here. It has been sweeps since he last heard her voice—since he lost her to a swarm of thieves. He cannot lose her again.

He flips back to chapter one and starts anew.

///

 The Archeradicators only take those with flawless vision.

 Horuss eyes his bow across the room, gritting his teeth. He gave up his dream long ago, but as the drafting cycle nears his age group, he fears the worst. The drones cull the physically handicapped on sight. Even with his acclimation lenses, he will not survive unless he proves he’s worth sparing.

 He has no idea where to start. No warrior class would take him up, no matter what strength or skill he brings, because his helmet is an obvious weakness that would get him killed quickly. That leaves homeworld classes only.

 The lenses would melt in the forges, so he gives up on metalworking, too. He considers possibility after possibility, ruling each out for incompatibility with his helmet or his person. With every option dashed, his lungs grow tighter, until he has to pace his block to keep himself from lashing out.

 He is strong. He can build. He can shoot. And he has nowhere to go unless he makes a place for himself.

 So he makes a place for himself.

///

 On drafting day, he surprises everyone.

 The evaluaters have no mercy, but he does not have to ask for any. He wields a mechanical bow, the string pulled so taut that only a troll of his strength can bear to shoot from it. The evaluaters know of his impaired vision, but nobody questions his talent when he shoots every bulls-eye at speeds and skill matched only by Archeradicators.

 Standing in line among his blood color, he watches the evaluaters type and whisper and squint until finally, they call forward trolls one by one to give assignments. His peers join the warrior ranks, the forges, the Imperial guard. They stare at his helmet and joke about his imminent culling. Horuss’s fingers itch for his bow.

 At last, they call him forward. He stands tall. He hears:

 “Horuss Zahhak, Executorturer.”

 and his heart leaps and his stomach drops and he can’t believe he’s alive but he can’t believe what he’s heard. He sighs, lets relief take over, and as he and the other indigo trolls are swept away to prepare for their new lives, life and death are in harmony within him.

///

 By the time he chooses his adult name, his peers have him labeled with a name of their own. Executor Darkleer they call him, omitting the “torturer” part because, frankly, he barely fulfills that part of the job. The others torture and execute with equal fervor while Horuss works in the background, and he feels quite content with his role, as do they. Horuss does the physical labor so his peers don’t have to, and in return, they allow him the killing blow so he has job security.

 (Watching trolls tortured and killed gives him night terrors at first, but he adapts, and eventually he learns to tune out the blood and the screaming.)

 Dozens of sweeps into his service, his squadron’s assignment narrows to extorting information from rebels associated with a revolutionary cult. He hears gossip detailing the cult’s leader as a red-blooded mutant aiming to destroy the hemocaste, but Horuss couldn’t care less. He stopped caring about politics the moment he was employed in the torture chambers. So when said red-blooded mutant comes through his queue of prisoners, he can’t say he’s surprised. Guards throw him and three others into cells in his area. They whisper amongst themselves. Horuss guesses the extra three are the mutant’s inner circle. The oldest, a jade-blood with tired eyes, stares at him with contempt whenever he passes through, as does the self-isolating mustard-blood. The mutant and the olive-blood appear to be in a quadrant. What a shame.

 Barely an hour after they appeared in their cells, the Grand Highblood himself visits Horuss’s block. “The red motherfucker is gonna give us a show,” he says. “Before he’s dead, you shoot up his matesprit however you like. Then you kill him. The others live. You hear?”

 “Assured,” Horuss responds. The Highblood grins menacingly and swaggers out of Horuss’s quarters. The unspoken threat hangs in the air for Horuss to accept on his own terms.

 The four prisoners spend almost every minute in the torture chambers. They never cry for mercy, he notices—only for each other. Horuss’s fingers twitch for an arrow countless times, but he knows to hold his fire, lest he be next in line for the whipping block himself.

 But that doesn’t stop him from wishing the suffering would end. No matter how long he spends in these chambers, he cannot stop his mind from drifting to the one he didn’t save—the one whose suffering was prolonged because he could not bear to risk his own life for hers, or at least end her before she was taken to bear who knows what horrors. He knows now what happens to sun-runners’ captives: sold as slaves to wealthy buyers, to companies as unpaid labor, to fates he can’t imagine without the contents of his stomach roiling in protest. Aranea did not deserve that. He prays she died early and curses himself for every moment she lived in their hands.

 Distracted by the flood of guilt, he doesn’t notice when the other trolls leave for break. Surprisingly, only one prisoner occupies the room with him, and he hangs by his wrists, feet barely grazing the floor. Blood seeps from lacerations up and down his torso, arms, legs, and face. The blood is candy red.

 “Horuss Zahhak,” he whispers hoarsely. Horuss’s brow furrows. He hasn’t heard his birth name for sweeps.

 “How do you know my name?”

 The mutant coughs, blood dribbling past his lips. “I...know about you,” he says between wheezes. Horuss narrows his eyes at the battered troll.

 “You know nothing.”

 “I know...that you have suffered,” the red-blood whispers. “I know that you have...lost someone close to you.” He strains against the bindings for a moment, scrabbling for the floor with his toes, but gives up soon after and sighs. “You tried so hard to save her. You were young and afraid. It was not your fault.”

 “Generic sentiments, mutant. Save your breath,” Horuss grumbles flippantly.

 “Aranea Serket.”

 Horuss flinches. The prisoner doesn’t flinch when Horuss slaps him across the face. “Who told you about her?” he demands, and he grabs the mutant’s face roughly, forcing him to look up. “How do you know about her?”

 Bright red eyes, though barely open, stare fearlessly into Horuss’s. “It was not your fault,” he repeats, almost inaudibly. Horuss can’t let go, can’t move, can’t breathe.

 “You know nothing!” he shouts again, nostrils flaring.

 “You were a child then,” the mutant continues. “I am so sorry you had to witness that, but you have to stop blaming yourself for her pain. There was nothing you could do.”

 Horuss says nothing. His hand relaxes, and he backs away from the suspended troll. For the first time since he spoke, the mutant raises his head on his own to look at Horuss.

 “I know you have felt the pain...of failing to save a loved one from suffering.” Horuss sees a vastness in his eyes. The mutant’s gaze drifts to the ceiling above. “My dreams were filled with a world where pain was at a minimum. I saw our race prosper peacefully, harmoniously, but our reality is...so much different. I sought to free our world from the never-ending agony ensconcing us all. That is what I fought for, Horuss. And that is what I will die for.” He pauses to breathe, his chest heaving with the effort. “When the time comes...I know what they intend to do to my matesprit. Please, Horuss, let her live. She deserved better than this. Do whatever you will to me, but for everything you have lost, for Aranea, I ask you, let her live.”

 He falls limp. Horuss stares in horror. Before he can respond, the other Executorturers reenter the room to finish the night’s work. They notice no difference in Executor Darkleer’s nightly silence, though they wonder why he eyes the prisoner so carefully.

///

 The arrow shakes in his grip as he stares down the olive-blood. Tears stream down her face for the mutant dangling from red-hot irons, and she clings to his discarded clothing like a lifeline. She meets Horuss’s gaze, and he sees the same emptiness in her as he saw in the mutant.

 Horuss mouths to her wordlessly, “Run.” She doesn’t understand at first, but when he whispers it again after pulling the arrow taut, she opens her mouth in disbelief. He nods to her imperceptibly, swallows, and fires.

 The arrow lodges in the dirt where the olive-blood stood seconds before. She disappears into the roaring crowd.

 She is gone by the time Horuss has fired an arrow into the mutant’s blood pusher.

 She is gone by the time Horuss feels a massive hand around his throat.

///

 He knew the torture chambers like the back of his hand. Now, he knows them like the backs of his hands, his knees, his feet, his shoulders and face, every inch of his skin and muscles, and every drop of blood remaining in his veins.

 He knows these chambers, and his torturers know him.

///

 The Highblood dumps his broken body in a field and absconds. Horuss lies, stunned, staring up at the stars in wonder. Or, rather, he stares up at where the stars would be, if he could see them. The Grand Highblood destroyed his helmet seconds after he freed the olive-blood. Her tear-streaked face was the last thing he saw, another crippling sight to add to his list of memories he cannot bear to think on.

 He should not be alive. Frankly, he does not _want_ to be alive. Whatever he wanted to live for was long gone, dissected and desecrated in the caves under the Empress’s throne. He has nothing left—not even his strength. In this plain he will die. The sun will rise and sear him into oblivion, and he will finally have peace.

 Horuss waits a long while for his inevitable death, but as he lies supine in the grass, he thinks that maybe he’s tired of giving up. He watched the light leave trolls’ eyes by his hand, watched others suffer because he wasn’t strong enough to end their pain. He can take a little more. He doesn’t have much to lose, anyway.

 Perhaps he will live just to spite the Empire. They broke him apart to punish him for sparing a life—a life which had previously been spent trying to repair broken lives. The irony is not lost on him, and he chuckles, instigating a wheeze that sends him into a coughing fit. Yes, that is what he will do. He will live.

 He pushes himself from the ground slowly and stands. Even without sight or weapon, he already feels stronger than he has felt in sweeps.

///

 He lives in an abandoned hive among many other abandoned hives, though his is in a slightly more stable state than the others. A few weeks into his exile, he wandered face first into the outer buildings of a ghost town, and he slowly made it home. Of course, he spent most of his time hunting and gathering and finding water sources, but overall, he feels content in his open-air hive.

 Except when guests arrive. He doesn’t get many, but when he does, there’s always trouble.

 Before him stands a fully mature troll, he guesses from her height. He sees mostly in blurs, but from her upright, confident stance, Horuss can tell this visitor fears no injury from him. He raises his spear and snarls, fangs bared.

“Whoa there,” she says, raising a hand between them. “I have peaceful intentions, if you would care to hear them.”

 “I will hear none of it! Leave!”

 “Is this how you treat all your guests, Darkleer? That must be why all the other residents bailed.”

 He snarls more aggressively at the mention of his old name. “How do you know who I am?”

 The troll laughs humorlessly. “It isn’t too hard to identify you, trust me. But that’s only part of why I’m here.” She waits for him to ask why she’s here, but to spite her, he keeps his mouth shut. She sighs dramatically and continues regardless. “I want to offer you a deal.”

 “A deal.”

 “Yes! A trade, so to speak. Your sight for my arm.”

 Horuss raises an eyebrow skeptically. “You think you can give me back my sight?”

 “No, Darkleer, I _know_ I can give you back your sight. As long as you agree to rebuild my lost limb, your eyes can be just as functional as they were before the execution of the Signless.”

 He scoffs. “You say that as if I would have the means to build a vision apparatus, much less a prosthetic. In these conditions.” He gestures to the hive with his spear. “I have nothing but these walls and whatever I can harvest on my own time. I have no tools, no materials, no work space. I am as incapable as a wiggler by metalworkers’ standards.”

 “I can provide you with all those things.”

 “Really.”

 The troll leans against the doorway and kicks a foot out. “Yes, _really_. I mean this sincerely. I will make good on the promise of your sight if you agree to fix me a limb. I will get you everything you need, Darkleer. On my honor.”

 “How do I know you are a troll of honor?”

 “I’m not,” she says flippantly. “But I need something from you, and I’ll be damned before I fall back on my desire to get it.”

 Horuss does not trust this troll. But on the other hand, he still has nothing to lose. “What are the terms of the deal?” he asks plainly.

 “I will help you rebuild your helmet, and once your sight is restored, you build me a functioning arm. Strictly business.”

 After a short pause, Horuss grunts. “Consider the deal accepted.” Her head bobs back in surprise, but she recovers quickly.

 “Excellent! Let’s get started, then,” she says, dropping a sack at Horuss’s feet. He keeps his grip on his spear. “Here’s everything you need for your eyes.” He grabs the cloth sack and slips one hand inside. The mechanical parts are unbelievably familiar.

 “Where did you get these?”

 “Here and there. I dabbled in a few mechanic’s storerooms.”

 He narrows his eyes. “Quite specific selections you made. These parts are not often used.”

 “I might have made a few purchases to fill in the gaps.” Horuss shakes his head knowingly. He runs his fingers over the various bits of metal and plastic. The more he touches them, the more he realizes he’s missed his sight. Restoring his vision would make this measly existence so much easier. He has brushed too close to cliff edges and clawbeast prides simply because he could not sense them. If he intends to survive, he can’t pass up this opportunity.

 “You will have to help me assemble the apparatus,” he declares.

 “I am well aware of that,” she says back as she examines the walls of his hive. “How long will it take?”

 “A perigee, minus one week.”

 “Fine. What are you waiting for? Tell me how to start!”

 “Pushy, aren’t you.”

 “It would be wise to avoid patronizing the troll restoring your vision.”

 Horuss huffs. “I don’t even know your name.”

 Again sighing dramatically, the troll swaggers toward him and cocks a hip. “The Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, at your service,” she says, motioning as if to doff a hat that she no longer wears. “Now we are both introduced. Time to build!”

///

 They mesh like oil and water. Mindfang is overbearing and, in Horuss’s words, “too excitable,” and Mindfang tires quickly of Horuss’s bland attitude. Still, they stick together because Horuss needs his eyes and Mindfang apparently needs an arm. They make it work.

 Sometimes they exchange stories. Mindfang shares grand tales of her exploits at sea, though Horuss is quite sure she embellishes each one of them to fit her grandeur. He doesn’t mind it, but he does notice that as much as she talks about herself, she glosses over many of the more personal details. On the contrary, she doesn’t waste any time prodding him for his life story. Horuss suspects it is a game for her; she already knows far more about him than she should. Horuss spends most of their conversations finding out what she already knows about him than about Mindfang herself. She knew of his nickname, Executor, and she knew where his old hive was, among other things. She never explains where she got her information. Something strikes him about her avoidance of the subject, but in the end, he won’t push her if it means he will get to see again.

 It takes weeks. Mindfang has only one eye as well, so the assembly and welding processes are unbelievably tricky. He patches up her remaining hand more times than he can count. Slowly, surely, finally, the helmet is finished.

 She helps him equip it delicately. The fit is not what he is used to, probably due to the parts coming from widely different sources, but he prefers an imperfect build to no sight at all. As soon as his eyes adjust, the rush of colors and shapes nearly overwhelm him.

 “Better?” Mindfang asks. He turns to look at her—his first real look of her since she arrived. She grins smugly, like she has a secret and doesn’t intend to tell him—

 and the breath leaves his body.

 He knows those mismatched horns. The last he saw of them, they were in his childhood hive, angled toward the wall as she lamented her lusus’s feeding habits. Her name ghosts his lips. Mindfang’s smirk morphs into a sad smile.

 “Aranea?” he whispers.

 “Horuss,” she replies, nodding. Without thinking, he lunges for her, gathering her up in his arms and swinging her around. She laughs lightly.

 “Aranea! You’re...you,” he mutters. “You’re alive.”

 She pats him on the shoulder gingerly. She never did like to be touched. “As alive as I ever was,” she teases.

 He shakes his head in disbelief. “I thought I would never see you again, and...” He pauses. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? You...you could have explained yourself any day. The day you arrived, even! Why did you wait until now to...?”

 She shrugs. “I thought it would be more exciting this way.”

 Horuss huffs and abruptly drops her on her feet. “You did this for dramatic effect?”

 “Not entirely. You would have thought it was a trick and kicked me out, or worse.”

 “Perhaps, but...Aranea, I thought you were dead, but here you are, and...” Her eyes meet his. “How did you even find me?”

 “A little cluckbeast told me,” she says smugly, her eyes crinkling at the corners. True to her words, her left eyes is scarred red, and her left shoulder lacks an appendage entirely. Her face is all sharp lines light scars, as is every other inch of her skin. Her tattered prisoner’s uniform drapes over her like a sheet. While he catalogs her appearance, Aranea drifts to her pile of belongings and produces a small, white sphere. It fits into the palm of her hand. “This little cluckbeast, in particular,” she muses.

 “That is not an egg.”

 “Not at all. Would you believe me if I said this ball tells me the future?” she asks, lifting it to her eyes. “I could see into it before the blasted Neophyte stole my vision eightfold. But still, I can hear it speak to me, almost like a whispering in my ear.” She hands it off to Horuss, who holds it carefully in both hands.

 “How?”

 “I have no idea, and I don’t really care. Its predictions have all been correct so far. It didn’t tell me I would find you, actually. I asked it how to get my arm back, and it said to look for a troll exiled to the plains. The little information it gave me about you was enough for me to wonder, but the moment I saw your horns, I knew it was you. Funny how these things work out, isn’t it?”

 “Quite,” he mutters. He passes the sphere back to Aranea, who hides it away in the folds of a burlap sack.

 His heart sinks. The burlap sack. Aranea, dragged from her home, dragged from her life by the thieves of daylight. And him, hiding behind the rocks, unable to save her from her fate.

 If she knew he failed to save her, she wouldn’t be so happy to see him. He knows: she has no idea he was there.

 “Well, now that we’ve established that, how about we get to making me able to tie knots again, eh?” she jokes, slapping him on the back. Horuss pushes the memories away and begins his work.

 ///

 While he builds her arm back, he learns about who she has become. The old Aranea occupies a very small part of this new troll. She never had a problem with self-confidence, but this troll’s ego is beyond uncontrollable. He suspects her time as a pirate captain is to blame. She teases him more than she used to, and not in the oddly self-deprecating way of their childhood. She doesn’t make jabs at her faults anymore, nor does she talk up his talents unless she needs something from him. Namely, she only compliments him when he’s doing something she needs done.

 Not that he minds much. Though she isn’t the girl he remembers, she is much more lively than she used to be, and that is what he needs right now. Living in solitude for sweeps was more draining than he cares to admit. With Aranea, he feels alive again. He can’t remember how he survived his exile alone for so long.

 But she is restless. He finds her throwing stones at fallen walls, the half-finished prosthetic dangling limply from her shoulder, and more often than is necessary, she prods him to go hunting with the bow he carved in between arm-building sessions. She watches him stalk prey with such fire in her eyes, as if she desperately wants to be in his shoes. He knows it isn’t about the kill or the acquired food. It bothers him a bit, but not enough for him to mention it. He doubts she would do anything but laugh it off.

 Deep down, he suspects she is hiding something from him, but there is no way to approach her. She still avoids his questions when he asks how she became a Gamblignant, and he hasn’t heard a word about the sun-runners since she arrived. He wants to help, but if she won’t trust him enough to speak up, there’s nothing he can do.

///

 She is ecstatic the day he finishes her arm. She flexes her fingers delicately, then rotates the arm in a circle. Her proud laughter echoes through the hive. “It’s perfect!” she exclaims. “You’re a miracle-worker, Horuss.” He grunts his thanks.

 And then question leaves his lips before he can think to stop it. “What do you plan to do now?” He curses himself silently, watching her reaction intently though he regrets asking at al. Her lips purse as she examines the new limb. Horuss waits.

 “I will get acclimated to my new arm, of course,” she says. “And then things will happen as they come.”

 Noticing her hesitance, Horuss crosses his arms. “The sphere has told you something.”

 “Yes.” She avoids his gaze. “It is inconsequential at the moment.”

 To alleviate the awkwardness, she stands and wanders the block, testing out her limb. Aranea asks him about the arm’s limitations, and he answers accordingly. She hides behind pretty words and joyous exclamations. He lets her.

///

 The night after their trade is completed, she stares at the limb and gives him answers.

 “Sun-runners,” she whispers. They lay in the grass outside his hive, stargazing. Quite a frivolous activity for two exiles, but they needed some way to celebrate. Horuss keeps his eyes trained on the sky so she has no reason to stop talking. “Sun-runners kidnapped me from my hive. I wasn’t even awake when they plucked me from my ‘coon. Spidermom figured it out, but she wasn’t fast enough to stop them.”

 She takes a deep breath. “They gagged me and threw me in a bag, and by the time I came to, I wasn’t home anymore. They kept me drugged most of the time before they sold me, and when they finally found a buyer who would pay enough money, I had lost all hope. They stopped me from jumping ship at least eight times.” Her empty laughter sends a chill down Horuss’s spine.

 “It took me a few weeks to figure out a plan. Most of the time, I was too exhausted to think. They worked me like a woofbeast. But once I dabbled in a few other slaves’ minds, I discovered the number of trolls I could control far outnumbered the ones I couldn’t.

 “So I slaughtered the lot of them.”

 Horuss should feel horror, or terror, or fear, but he doesn’t feel anything but sadness for his old friend, maybe relief that she didn’t experience one of the worse fates of a sun-runner slave. The urge to pap her on the arm swells within him, but he swallows the feeling and lets her continue.

 “I took over the ship and found a new crew. Apparently, I had overthrown one of the better known Gamblignant ships, so trolls were not hard to come by. They didn’t see the captain they were expecting, though. A barely mature troll wielding an oversized sword? Pathetic, they thought. I gave them no mercy.” She turns to him, then. “I ruled the seas for sweeps, Horuss. I thought I was invincible.” She scoffs. “And now I depend on a magic cue ball to take my next steps.”

 The silence between them stretches on as Horuss searches for his next words. “I am sorry they took you,” he says finally.

 “It wasn’t your fault,” she says easily. He grits his teeth.

 “I...I am at fault, to an extent, unfortunately.”

 The grass around her rustles as she sits up. “What do you mean?”

 Taking a deep breath, he explains how he lost his vision. Her face stays stony and unreadable throughout. He tells her everything from killing the intruders to the near exchange on the sand.

 “I am so sorry I wasn’t strong enough to shoot. Perhaps you wouldn’t have suffered if I had overcome my fear of death, of your death, but...I was weak, then. I wasn’t strong enough to save you,” he says. Her eyes pierce through his defenses.

 She is silent a long while before she says, “I wouldn’t have seen the world if they hadn’t taken me.” Her sigh makes him shudder. “We didn’t get what either of us wanted, did we?”

 “No, we did not.”

 “I forgive you, Horuss.”

 “Aranea—”

 “Don’t argue. I won’t hold it against you. We were basically wigglers. I was weak then, too, and I doubt I would have done anything differently in your shoes. Except I wouldn’t have opened my eyes all the way. That was especially dumb, even for you!” she teases. Her halfhearted smirk breaks his heart. “Besides, we both survived. We would be greedy to ask for more.”

 He wonders if she hears his whispered “Thank you.”

 ///

 She planned to leave him from the start. He catches her packing her bag at twilight, and he nearly lets her go, but his selfishness pushes him to confrontation.

 “Where are you going?” he asks firmly, and she freezes.

 “I need to go now,” she replies just as firmly. She meets his gaze with one edge of her lip curved upward. “I have stayed longer than I should have. Thank you for your hospitality and your help, Horuss, but I must be on my way.”

 “To where?”

 “The rebellion,” she says. His surprise translates into his next words.

“What in the Empire’s name are you doing in the rebellion?” he demands. She rolls her eye.

“I make a wonderful asset, of course. I have connections and power and money. What more could they ask from an ally?”

“But why, Aranea? What do you care for them?”

She shrugs. “I will join any force that aims to take down the legal system as it stands.”

“So you don’t care about the rebellion. You just want to tear apart the Empire.”

“Precisely.” Her grin doesn’t meet her eyes. “And they’ll need me to do it.”

He presses his palms into his face. “You could get killed with them.”

Her next words make him freeze: “I will be killed with them.” She whispers them under her breath, like a promise, and it all suddenly makes sense.

“The cue ball told you this.”

“Yes.”

“So why go if you know you are going to die?”

“It is the only future where I remain relevant.”

“You would trade relevance for life?”

“For what life, Horuss? We hide in abandoned hives, hunt for food like prehistoric beasts! The Empire wants us dead, and if I’m going to die, I want to die with my sword drawing blood from their throats!”

“I don’t want to lose you again!” he cries finally. Her face falls at the emotion on his.

“If I stay, we both die very soon.”

“Then I will go—”

“If you join me, we die before we reach the rebellion. You have to stay, Horuss.”

There is nothing left to say. Horuss knew she would leave eventually, but seeing her actually preparing to go without him, he finally sees he would always have lost her again in the end. He storms out of the hive and punches through several leftover walls, watching them fall to pieces beneath him.

She is waiting for him when he returns. “I need you to keep this for me,” she says levelly, clutching the cue ball in her non-robotic hand. “I won’t have any need for it once I leave.”

She rolls it into his waiting palms. Its cool surface is unfamiliar. Daunting, even. “It will be safe with me.”

“I know it will be.” She shuffles past him to the doorway. “Thank you.”

He forces himself to watch her leave. “Goodbye, Aranea,” he chokes out. She nods to him.

“Goodbye, Horuss.”

And she leaves him with only a white sphere and his vision to remember her by. 

///

 The sweeps pass slowly. He finds himself submerged in memories for the most part: burlap sacks and sunlight, two pairs of tortured eyes, and heated shackles. The cue ball stays hidden in his belongings for a while until he finds a beautifully bound book buried in the rubble surrounding his hive.

 It is her diary.

 He wastes no time in reading it, privacy be damned. The tales fill him with pride at some points and sicken him at others. At the end is a page ripped from the bindings. Within, he discovers a note addressed to him.

 “Dearest Horuss,

 “I apologize for not telling you that I left this as well. I have done things I try not to remember, but to be quite frank, wronging you was one I found I could not forgive myself for.” His eyes widen. Wronging him?

 “I lied to you when I said you could not join me in the rebellion. Yes, we would have both died if you had come, but in the battle, not on the journey there. I sincerely apologize for deceiving you. The truth is that I needed you here to store the cue ball. It must stay safe, and you held the safest haven on Alternia.

 “It is more important than I can explain, Horuss. It heralds this planet’s destruction in order to create anew. This result is inevitable, but if our race is to survive, I was told the cue ball had to stay with you. In fact, both the ball and this diary must be buried in this rubble for the ball to travel its full course. Please comply. If you do not, I do not know what will become of us or our descendants.

 “I am so sorry for leaving you, Horuss. My regret cannot be put into words. I only hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me in your future.

 “With love, Aranea.”

 He sits in the crumbling rocks and stares ahead for hours. Of everything he has endured, he has never felt the pain of betrayal. It sears in his chest like hot coals. Shaking his head numbly, he wanders into his hive and grabs the cue ball and some cloth, bringing them back to where the diary sits upon the rocks. He bundles them both within the fabric and buries them in the rubble.

He returns to his hive and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. 

///

 When the drones finally find him, he almost welcomes death. They spatter him with gunfire, and as soon as he falls, they leave his hive.

 His blood stains the floor. He doesn’t quite mind the feeling. He is warm inside, and if he is honest with himself, he feels like the irons on his wrists have finally been undone.

 At last, he is free.


End file.
